Predator Vs. Slayer
by Gyrus
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.
1. Arrival

Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 1  
Author: Gyrus  
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.   
Summary: A team of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.  
Rating: PG, for violence.  
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.  
  
-----  
  
PREDATOR VS. SLAYER  
  
It was all they had ever known.   
  
They built their lives around it. It was the focus of all their art, their religion, their language, their science and technology. Their history and folklore praised it, and every major achievement their species had ever made owed its occurrence to it.   
  
The Hunt was everything.   
  
Since their earliest history, they had tracked the most fearsome beasts on their planet and killed them, first with spears, then bows, firearms, plasma weapons. Then, driven by the need to find more challenging targets, they moved out into space. The galaxy was full of planets with life, sometimes tame and uninteresting, sometimes deliciously fearsome. Soon, the trophy dens of the great houses were decorated with bones, teeth, claws, and spines from thousands of deadly creatures on hundreds of worlds.   
  
But no matter how many marvelous beasts they found to prey upon, the lure of finding some new and even more dangerous quarry was ever-present. These were the prizes on which reputations were made, and from which legends were born.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya was old by Hunter standards, but this morning, for the first time in months, he felt young. Months ago, he had attained the rank of Elder Huntmaster, a respectable title for a Hunter of Reghya's years, although, at the same time, it meant retirement from the off-world hunts. Elder Huntmasters frequently became teachers or lawgivers, useful and respected members of the community.   
  
Reghya had been made an archivist.   
  
It was not that he minded the work. Reghya had always been quite cerebral by Hunter standards, and he enjoyed reviewing the accounts of hunts past, from the legendary to the ordinary. But there was no honor attached to the position, no respect. The looks in the eyes of his peers, their slow withdrawal from his social circle, told him as much.   
  
It didn't matter. Reghya considered his new position a sieve in which thin, weak friendships were strained out, so that only the substantial ones remained. Besides, the work itself was terribly absorbing. Reghya could lose himself for hours in the tales of adventure and misfortune on distant worlds.   
  
One particular world caught his attention. A small, blue planet called "Earth", which, Reghya had read, was the indigenous preys' word for "dirt". Reghya chuckled to himself; the creatures had peculiar minds to go with their feeble muscles, fragile endoskeletons, and primitive technology. Unarmed, they were almost helpless; only their relatively primitive weapons made them even remotely challenging as prey. It was only their exotic location, far from the homeworld, that made them interesting enough for Hunters to pursue. A human skeleton could make for a few minutes of conversation in a Hunter's trophy den.   
  
But that was the humans' only appeal. There were far more deadly prey elsewhere in the galaxy, and in places more convenient to the homeworld. So, for the most part, the Hunters left the little blue planet at the edge of the galaxy alone.   
  
Until the day Reghya changed their minds.   
  
-----   
  
It was 2am, and Buffy Summers was out for a late-night slay. She was patrolling the graveyard on Rosewood and Elm, to which she had tracked a vampire just before dawn the day before. He'd evaded her somehow, but tonight, she was going to get him.   
  
No matter that the vampire was Barry Lefkowitz, who had been in the class behind Buffy's at Sunnydale High, and who had graduated this past spring after finishing his senior year at Edgemont. And who, apparently, had stayed out a little too late celebrating and gotten an unexpected transfusion from one of Sunnydale's undead-Americans. It was ironic, really; Barry had earned the nickname "Crash" for passing out at the sight of blood, even his own. Buffy briefly toyed with the idea of letting him bite her, just to see what would happen.   
  
But, as she gazed around the quiet graveyard, Buffy soon forgot all thoughts except one.   
  
Find it and kill it.   
  
She walked carefully among the headstones, slowly turning her head from side to side as her keen senses scanned for her inhuman target. The fingers of her right hand twitched at her side, like a those of a gunfighter, anticipating the moment when she would draw her weapon and take out her lone opponent.   
  
And then, just as she passed a tall, square mausoleum, noticing, out of the corner of her eye, a flicker of movement just above it...  
  
"YAAAAGH!"   
  
The shout came from above, and Buffy turned just in time to see a large figure land right behind her and tackle her to the ground. She twisted around as a large, strong-looking vamp tried to crawl on top of her, and she snapped her elbow back into his jaw. The big vampire rolled off of her; rolling the other way, she curled her body backwards and launched herself onto her feet with her hands.   
  
Just in time to get hit across the back with a two-by-four.   
  
She stumbled forward, but didn't fall. Looking behind her, she saw Barry in full vamp-face, holding the makeshift weapon.   
  
"I figured you'd come after me tonight," he said, pointing to the other vampire. "So I had to vamp Joey McMillan, here. He was Edgemont's best lineman, you know. They called him 'Bulldozer'."  
  
"Yeah?" said Buffy, slowly stepping sideways to keep the two vamps from flanking her. "Well, tomorrow, they're going to be calling him 'Dusty'."   
  
She whipped around suddenly as she pulled a stake from inside her jacket and hurled it at Joey, who had gotten to his feet. He dodged aside just far enough to get the stake through his bicep instead of his heart.   
  
Joey roared in pain and charged her. Buffy lashed out with a front kick and caught the vampire in the stomach, then turned just as Barry swung his two-by-four in a diagonal path down towards her head. In a move that would have caused compound fractures in most human forearms, Buffy blocked the board aside with her right arm as she drove the palm of her left hand into Barry's chin, snapping his head back and disorienting him long enough for her to grab the two-by-four and twist it out of the vampire's hands. She rammed one end of it into Barry's solar plexus, knocking him down.   
  
Suddenly, Buffy's lower torso exploded with pain as Joey's fist struck her left kidney from behind. She spasmed for a moment, long enough for Joey to grab her arms and trunk in a bear hug. As he brought his head down to plunge his fangs into her neck, Buffy leaned her own head forward and then snapped it back, smashing Joey's face with the back of her head and loosening his grip on her. With a shout, she pushed her chest and upper arms outward, throwing Joey's arms off of her, then stepped forward, turned, and slammed the two-by-four down on the crown of Joey's head. The vampire fell over as Buffy snapped the board in half with her knee, making two sharp-ended pieces, and drove one straight into Joey's chest. He exploded into dust.   
  
Buffy turned, expecting to find Barry on his feet again. Indeed, he was, but he was now using those feet to run hell-for-leather towards the main gate of the graveyard. Buffy gave chase, retaining the other half of the broken board, her powerful legs accelerating her body to a speed most Olympic sprinters would envy. Then, just as Barry was about to pass through the gate, Buffy hurled the broken board at Barry like a spear. It took him through the back, piercing his heart and reducing him to dust.   
  
Buffy stopped, breathing hard and leaning against a headstone. "Whoo", she said out loud, "track AND field. There should really be medals for this."  
  
But as she recovered from her exertion, Buffy had an odd feeling that...well, she wasn't sure what. Ever since her encounter with the First Slayer, her perceptions had become more acute somehow, often in ways she wasn't fully conscious of. It was as if, somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain, tiny bits of information from all of her senses were being synthesized into one vague feeling that was allowed to reach her awareness.   
  
Vague though it was, however, it felt familiar. It wasn't the feeling of danger, exactly....  
  
Then she knew.   
  
It was the feeling of being watched.   
  
END OF PART 1 


	2. Breaking the Ice

PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 2  
  
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 2  
Author: Gyrus  
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.   
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.   
Rating: PG, for violence.  
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.  
  
-----  
  
Buffy stood still for nearly a minute, sweeping her gaze slowly over the silent graveyard. Her gut was telling her that there was something out there besides the dust of the two vampires she had just slain. But her five senses could find nothing to confirm that suspicion.   
  
Fifty yards away, in a small stand of trees just outside the graveyard, the nearly-invisible hand of Taghryn, second child of Reghya, stretched out, the large fingers settling on the hand of her older brother, Ghrall. With surprising dexterity, Taghryn's fingers tapped and doodled over her sibling's palm, communicating in the Hunters' tactile stalking language.   
  
It senses us, Taghryn said.   
  
Ghrall's fingers spelled out a response: Maybe.   
  
What is it? A cold human like the others? Taghryn asked.   
  
Ghrall's hand moved away for a moment to adjust the settings of his Huntmask. Although infrared was the mask's default viewing mode, Ghrall had previously switched it to ultraviolet in order to track the two now-disintegrated humanoids in the graveyard, because the creatures seemed to have no body heat at all. Now, the Hunter reset the mask to IR mode, seeing the world once again in the reds and blues of heat and cold.   
  
No, not cold, Ghrall communicated with a short burst of taps on Reghya's palm.   
  
In fact, the human's heat signature was brighter than any Ghrall had ever seen, indicating an metabolic rate well above that of any human on record. But as the Hunters watched, the human's external body temperature quickly fell into the normal range for its species.   
  
Eventually, the human seemed to give up its search of the graveyard, and walked out through the main gates of the graveyard, occasionally casting glances behind it.   
  
A third hand, belonging to Reghya himself, came and made contact with the other two. Magnificent, he said. Better than cold humans. This one is prey, now.   
  
Yes, was the response from both offspring. Yes, yes, yes.   
  
-----  
  
It had taken the three Hunters almost a month to reach Earth. Once they arrived, the faster-than-light ship that had carried them put them off in a drop ship. They would be picked up in another 29 days. But, Reghya thought, the long journey had been worthwhile.   
  
Reghya's diligence as an archivist had produced an unexpected benefit. While perusing the records of offworld hunts from the past few centuries, Reghya had discovered something intriguing about the planet Earth. Two Hunters who had gone there on separate occasions had reported encounters with a powerful humanoid creature that was as strong as a Hunter and nearly invisible to infrared. Both Hunters claimed to have fired upon these creatures with plasma weapons, but instead of merely burning, the creatures disintegrated, leaving no trophy save a handful of dust.   
  
In both cases, these stories had been dismissed as fabrications created to avoid the embarrassment of an unsuccessful hunt. But these incidents had occurred almost four generations apart. Reghya decided that the similarity between the two stories had to be more than just coincidence. Perhaps there was a species on Earth stronger than the humans, predators that killed humans to survive. Given what easy prey the humans were, Reghya thought, it made sense that there was a link above theirs in Earth's food chain.   
  
And so, that night at dinner, Reghya told his family of his findings and proposed a journey to Earth to hunt the human-eaters.   
  
Reghya's oldest, Ghrall, was fascinated, as Reghya had expected. Ghrall was much like Reghya -- thoughtful and clever, perhaps overly so. In his earlier years, while his peers practiced with their plasma weapons, Ghrall took his apart to examine its workings. Hunting known species was not terribly interesting to him, but the notion of pursuing a completely new kind of prey intrigued him.   
  
Reghya's second child, Taghryn, was somewhat skeptical of Reghya's findings at first but willing to risk disappointment for the possibility of a challenging hunt. Taghryn was far closer to the Hunter ideal than her father or older brother; she was athletic, skilled with over two dozen different weapons, and, most importantly, she trusted her instincts rather than her intellect. And her instincts were very good. At fifteen, she had single-handedly taken down a Ulantan blade-bird. Blade-birds had killed seventeen Hunters in the past, but Taghryn slew the deadly avian without suffering so much as a scratch. Less than a year later, she took her first Iellan spineback, considered one of the hardest creatures to kill. And she had taken three more since then. Reghya knew Taghryn would do well on the Earth hunt.   
  
Reghya had not planned to make the journey to Earth himself, however. He was too old to be allowed to hunt offworld. But Ghrall and Taghryn insisted that Reghya join them as an observer. Reghya had discovered the human-eaters, after all; he should at least have the privilege of seeing them up close. Reghya ultimately agreed, overwhelmed by his curiosity about the Earth creatures he had discovered.   
  
The other members of the family could not make the trip. Reghya's mate, Yaar, was also retired from the Hunt, and had job responsibilities she couldn't escape; she was in the middle of her training to become a plasma weapons engineer. Their youngest child, Itagh, was not yet old enough to hunt offworld. She still held the responsibility of hunting food animals for the family.   
  
The three Hunters decided to begin their hunt in a small, human-settled region near the coast of one of Earth's northern continents, where the most recent encounter with the human-eaters reportedly had taken place. Ghrall and Taghryn had packed a full array of weapons and equipment, not knowing what to expect from their prey. Reghya, who would only be observing the hunt, took only his stalking suit, with its mimetic sight-shield to provide camouflage, and his Huntmask.  
  
Ghrall, as the eldest sibling, would lead the hunt. It was not without pride that Reghya snapped the yuragh, the traditional wrist band of the hunt leader, on his offspring's forearm as they boarded the craft that would take them to Earth in their quest for new prey.   
  
But now, after watching the nighttime battle in the graveyard, it was clear that the prizes to be found on Earth were even better than the Hunters could have imagined. Not only were the human-eaters real (and, from the looks of their fangs, "human-eaters" was obviously the right term), but they, too, had an enemy that hunted them.   
  
Reghya was immensely pleased. His own hunting career might have been less than impressive in the eyes of his people, but his children now had the chance to become figures of legend for killing a creature of such immense fierceness and skill.   
  
-----  
  
"Nooo!" Buffy shouted as she spilled milk all over the bottoms of her Yummi Sushi pajamas.   
  
Great, she thought as she yanked a couple of paper towels off the roll in her mother's kitchen. I can protect the world from the undead menace, but I can't add milk to Corn Pops without adult supervision.   
  
"Everything all right?" her mother called from upstairs.   
  
"Fine, mom," Buffy shouted back.  
  
Her mother came downstairs anyway, just as Buffy was wiping the last stray drops of milk from the floor.   
  
"'Morning, sweetie," Joyce said, then noticed her daughter's milk-stained sleepwear. "Oh, dear."   
  
"It's just spilled milk," Buffy said with false cheer. "Nothing worth crying over."   
  
"Buffy," her mom said with some concern, "you only get clumsy when there's something on your mind. You want to talk about it?"   
  
"It's...it's nothing, really. I was in the Ash Street graveyard last night, dealing with a couple of vamps, and I just...I felt something a little creepy."   
  
"You were in a cemetery -- in the middle of the night -- fighting monsters from Hell -- and it felt a LITTLE creepy?"  
  
"No, it wasn't any of that stuff. It was like...I don't know, like something was watching me. But I didn't see anybody else there."   
  
"Are you going to tell Giles about it?"   
  
"No. He'll respond with a lot of worrying and cautioning, and I can get that at home."   
  
"Cute. Why don't you go upstairs and change, and I'll make us some eggs? And fresh-squeezed orange juice..." Joyce finished in a sing-song, let-me-tempt-you tone.   
  
"Sorry," Buffy said. "No time. Me and the gang are going ice skating." She felt a twinge of guilt, going out with her friends when her mother was obviously craving some quality time.   
  
"That's a nice idea," said Joyce. She was trying not to look hurt, but it wasn't working. "At least it will get you out of the heat."   
  
"Yeah. I gotta go change."   
  
Buffy ran upstairs and changed out of her pj's into jeans and a t-shirt that would be comfortable in the 90-degree heat, then grabbed a jacket to wear on the ice. She then headed back down to the kitchen for a quick glass of OJ out of the 'fridge. Her mom was still there, making herself some tea.   
  
"Are you staying at Riley's place tonight?" Joyce asked. "Because it's all right with me if you are."   
  
Buffy turned away from the open refrigerator, orange juice carton in hand. "OK," she said, "whatever sort of demon is inside my mother, I command it to be gone."   
  
"No, no, I just wanted to know if I would...have the house to myself, that's all."   
  
"And why would you want to know that?" Buffy asked, lowering her eyebrows in suspicion. Was her mother planning something without her?   
  
Buffy felt stupid; her she was, running off and ditching her mom for the day, and then getting upset because her mother was making plans of her own.   
  
"Well...I have a date," Joyce said.   
  
"You have a DATE? And you weren't going to tell me?"   
  
"It's just someone I met at the gallery. It's not a big deal."   
  
"And have you seen Mr. Someone in direct sunlight?"   
  
"Now who's worrying and cautioning?" Joyce asked wryly. "And yes, I have. He didn't even smolder. Well, except maybe his eyes...."  
  
"You just said that to creep me out, didn't you?" Buffy said. Buffy preferred to believe that her mother had never had, thought about, or even heard of sex, Buffy's own existence being the result of some sort of immaculate conception.   
  
Buffy poured some juice into a glass and swallowed it quickly, then looked at her watch. "I gotta go," she said. "If I don't see you, have fun. Oh, and if he's a demon, beep me."   
  
-----  
  
Xander Harris had been through some rough battles in his life. He could state in perfect honesty that he'd had his butt kicked by more unholy creatures of the night than almost anybody. But none of them had ever made his butt hurt more than the ice at the Sunnydale Skating Rink.   
  
It was his first time on skates -- any kind of skates. The same was true for Anya, who had given up half an hour ago and was now sucking down diet soda at the snack bar and watching the kids go by.   
  
Maybe she's wondering how they taste, he thought as he lay sprawled on the ice for the umpteenth time that morning while people skated around his prone body. Then he smacked himself mentally for thinking such a thing. Anya was a little light on social skills, but she wasn't a demon anymore. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that. Besides, she'd always reserved her vengeance for grown men.   
  
Willow and Tara were faring little better than Xander, crashing and burning almost as often as he did, but laughing every time. At least they had each other to fall on.   
  
Looking ahead of him, Xander saw Buffy and Riley skating hand in hand. They were moving with perfect ease, like they'd been born with blades instead of feet. Of course. Xander idly wondered if Tonya Harding's bodyguard was available for another kneecap job.   
  
Xander wasn't sure why he was in such a foul mood as he gazed upon the Slayer and her beefy beau. It wasn't jealousy; Xander had gotten over his crush on Buffy a long time ago. And Riley was becoming his best -- really, his only -- male friend. But everything about Buffy and Riley as a couple was too perfect, too normal. And, sometimes, too cutesy for words. Even now, they were observing the pukesome boyfriend/girlfriend tradition of wearing the same outfits -- in this case, blue jeans and leather jackets.   
  
Except that, unlike Riley's, Buffy's jacket had something shiny on the back of it. Three red points of light, forming a perfect triangle right in the middle of her back.   
  
Laser sights.   
  
There was no time to look to see where the gunmen were, no time to get up, no time for anything except to scream, "Buffy! GET DOWN!"   
  
Somehow, over the bad organ music and the shouts of children, Buffy heard him. She must have, because she dove forward onto the ice, dragging Riley down with her.   
  
At that very moment, something bright and blue shot down from above and struck right in front of Buffy and Riley, melting the ice there. Slayer and soldier slid into the hot puddle and stopped for a moment, then rolled rapidly away from each other as a second bolt flew down to hit the same spot.   
  
Xander turned over on the ice and looked up, searching for the shooter. There was a catwalk that circled the ceiling, probably for fixing the lights and so forth, but no one was on it. Xander did notice, however, that the sliding door that permitted access to the roof was open, creating a square of blue sky in the pale green ceiling.   
  
Xander saw a flicker of movement along the ladder that led up to the sliding door, a sort of distortion, like air over hot pavement. Xander barely saw it before it was gone.   
  
But, whatever it was, it was real enough to close the sliding door behind it.   
  
-----  
  
"You missed!" Taghryn cried.   
  
"Of course," Ghrall responded. "What fun would it be to shoot the creature in the back?"   
  
"Then why were you sighting on it?"   
  
"I was just getting the range. I thought a shot directly in front of the prey would be a good way to frighten it."   
  
"Of course," Taghryn said, suddenly understanding. "It will be a better challenge if it knows it is being hunted." Her nerves tingled with excitement. As with all her species, the Hunt was what she was born for, but she loved it even more than most.   
  
"Yes," said Reghya, who stood behind Ghrall and Taghryn on the roof of the ice rink. "No trophy is meaningful if it is acquired with too much ease."   
  
Taghryn turned to face her father. "What was the large creature that was with the prey?"   
  
"A male of the species," Reghya replied. "They tend to be larger, and differently-shaped."   
  
"Their gender is so...obvious," Taghryn said. Male and female Hunters' bodies were much alike, and could only be distinguished clearly during mating season. "How is it that the mating urge is not always on them?"   
  
"What makes you think it is not?" Ghrall cut in. "There ARE over six billion of them."   
  
Taghryn laughed aloud.   
  
"Come," Reghya said. "It is time to eat. We will return to the drop ship for a meal."   
  
"What about the prey?" Taghryn asked. "Shouldn't we keep following it?"   
  
"I do not think there is need," Reghya replied. "No doubt, the prey will soon come looking for us."   
  
-----  
  
Within fifteen minutes, all six of the skating Scoobies were at Giles', talking at the former Watcher a mile a minute.   
  
"All right, all right!" Giles shouted. "Everyone calm down. Just tell me what happened, one at a time."   
  
"Xander, you saw it first," Buffy said.   
  
"Yeah," Xander responded. "No. I mean, I didn't really see it, just the three dots on Buffy's back."   
  
"Three dots?" Giles asked.   
  
"Laser dots. Like the kind they use for gun sights."   
  
"Except this wasn't a gun," Buffy added. "Not a regular, bang-bang type gun, anyway."   
  
"More like a big-bolt-from-the-sky-that-makes-everybody-run-screaming type gun," Anya said.   
  
"I'm not aware of any demonic species that uses such a weapon," Giles said.  
  
"Maybe it wasn't demons," Willow suggested. She turned towards Riley. "Maybe it was some secret government gizmo in the wrong hands. Or the right hands," she added, with a faint look of worry.   
  
"The R and D people at the Initiative experimented with all kinds of energy weapons," Riley said. "Lasers, particle beams, plasma guns. But the power requirements were way too high; for one shot, you needed a battery the size of a shopping cart. Our blasters were the best they could manage."   
  
"And then there's the invisibility thing," Xander cut in.   
  
"What?" said Giles.   
  
"I couldn't see much," Xander said, "but something climbed up the ladder and out the sliding door on the roof. It was...kind of wavy, like if you moved a bad magnifying glass in front of your face. Almost invisible, but not quite, you know?"  
  
"Wait a moment," Giles said, standing up and going to his bookshelves. "This sounds vaguely familiar."   
  
After a couple of minutes of poring through the Watchers' Diaries, Giles exclaimed, "Ah! Here. Father Jacob Billingsley, a Watcher who went to El Salvador as a missionary in 1703, wrote, 'The people here sometimes speak of a demon which visits the jungle, moving among the tops of trees, nearly invisible. It has many weapons, the most deadly of which is a lightning bolt it casts down from above. I have asked many of the villagers about this demon, as there is no previous record of such a creature in the Watchers' annals, but the only other piece of information they can provide is-' Oh, dear Lord."   
  
"What?" Buffy said.   
  
Giles continued reading. "'-that the monster always takes the skin or bones of its victims. The local name for this creature, I am told, translates as 'the demon that makes trophies of men.''"  
  
"And now it wants to make a trophy of Buffy," Riley said. "Which means we'd better kill it first."   
  
"Giles," Buffy said, "this thing blasted away at me in the middle of the day, in a public place full of kids. If it tries that again..."   
  
"Someone could get hurt," Giles finished. "Well, disturbed though I am by our lack of knowledge about this creature, I believe Riley is right. We must find it before it attacks Buffy again."   
  
"But how are you going to find it?" Anya asked. "I mean, you have no idea where it lives, or what it eats, or why it's here. You're not even at square one, you're at, like, square zero."   
  
"An?" Xander said. "Remember what we talked about? 'If you can't say anything helpful....'"  
  
"Well," Buffy cut in, "we know it likes trophies, right?"   
  
"And it's pretty clear that you're the trophy de jour," Riley said.   
  
Buffy looked at him. "So we go out in the woods, where other people can't get hurt, and wait for it."   
  
"Oh. Goody," Willow said nervously. "We're going hunting for something we can't see. That doesn't worry me, 'cause worry...is the wrong word. Terror. That's the right word."   
  
"Yeah, as plans go, that one sucks," Xander added. "I mean, we're talking about a monster that can turn people into corn dogs with one shot. Somehow, the 'here I am, come and get me' approach doesn't seem like the way to go."  
  
"That's why you guys aren't going," Buffy said. "This one is strictly for me and Riley."   
  
Giles started to object, but Riley cut him off. "Don't worry. We'll take walkie-talkies, check in every half hour." Riley took a radio unit out of his jacket pocket, switched it on, and placed it on Giles' coffee table. "And we'll bring plenty of weapons."   
  
Buffy quickly went through Giles' stash of medieval hardware, choosing a crossbow and a small but wicked-looking hand axe. Then she and Riley headed for his place to pick up Riley's more modern armaments.   
  
After Buffy and Riley left, the other Scoobies spent a few minutes trying to reassure one another that it was going to be all right, that Buffy and Riley had fought worse things before. It was hard to come up with many examples, though, and soon they all fell into worried silence.   
  
After a few minutes, Tara spoke up.   
  
"M-Mister Giles? Did you say that the Watchers didn't have any record of this demon before 1703?"   
  
"That's right," Giles said.  
  
"Well, isn't that sort of strange? I mean, demons have been around since before human history, right? A demon that shoots blue lightning, you'd think someone would have noticed it before the eighteenth century."   
  
"A valid point," Giles said, the worry lines on his face deepening.   
  
Willow added, "And Father Billingsley said that the demon VISITED the jungle right? That means it didn't live there."   
  
"Yes, but...what are you trying to say?" Giles asked.   
  
"Well, maybe the thing that shot at Buffy isn't a demon at all. Or a human. Maybe it's...." She turned her eyes upward.   
  
Giles was silent for a moment. Then he said, quietly, "And if it is, then it has the ability to travel among the stars. Who knows what other technology it might have?"   
  
Xander grabbed Riley's walkie-talkie off the coffee table and pressed the SEND button. "Buffy, Riley, are you there, over?" He waited a few seconds. "Buffy, Riley, can you hear me? We have important information, over." He waited a few more seconds, then tried again. "Guys? Are you there? Guys?"   
  
Static was the only response.  
  
END OF PART 2 


	3. Firing Blind

PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 3  
  
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 3  
Author: Gyrus  
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.   
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.   
Rating: PG, for violence.  
Author's Notes: This story is set between seasons 4 and 5 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. The story is a serial; I plan to post one new part per week until the story is finished.  
  
-----  
  
Buffy and Riley cruised along a highway access road, sticking closely to the speed limit. If they were pulled over, the crossbow and medieval hand axe in the back seat would make for an awkward conversation with the highway patrol.   
  
The two were heading for the state park on the outskirts of town. The park was mostly forest, and people would be few and far between. The idea was to keep anyone from getting caught in the crossfire when and if the bolt-hurling being who had nearly parboiled Buffy and Riley at the skating rink showed up.   
  
Riley, who was driving, glanced at Buffy and pointed to his olive-drab knapsack in the back seat. "Want to unzip that and check my equipment?" Riley asked.   
  
Ordinarily, Buffy would have made some clever response to Riley's unwitting double entendre, but the situation was too tense. They were about to face a foe about which they knew next to nothing save that it was very powerful and enjoyed taking human body parts as trophies.   
  
Buffy grabbed the bag, unzipped it, and began rifling through the contents. "Let's see, camouflage jacket and pants, walkie-talkie, hand taser, retractable baton, and..." -- she fished a large, unfamiliar object from the bottom of the bag -- "whoa. A really big gun."   
  
"Nine millimeter Beretta," Riley said. "I know you're not crazy about guns, but I figured, in the middle of the woods, there won't be too many innocent bystanders."   
  
"Hey, you're talking to the gal who fired a rocket launcher in a shopping mall. When it comes to invisible demons with photon torpedoes, I don't mind having a little firepower on our side."   
  
They drove the last few minutes of the trip in silence, until they turned into the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of Fisher State Park. They got out and grabbed their weapons, then Riley began to change into his camos.   
  
"So, Rocket Gal, what's the strategy here?" Riley said, trying to be cheerful as he pulled on his olive-drab pants.   
  
"We walk into the woods and wait for it to shoot at me," she said soberly.  
  
"Will that work better for us than it did for General Custer?" Riley asked, anxiety creeping into his voice. He didn't mind taking risks himself, but the idea of Buffy in serious danger brought out the crazy in him.   
  
"Look, whatever it is, it's gunning for the Slayer," Buffy responded. "So I get its attention. Then you shoot at it -- or towards it, anyway -- to make it keep its head down, while I circle around and nail it with the crossbow."   
  
"That's a pretty good plan," Riley said.   
  
"Thank you."  
  
"Except for the fifty-fifty chance that you'll be fried where you stand."  
  
"Believe me, I don't want to end up a McNugget. But come-and-get-me is the best plan we have. Unless you brought hummus."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Nothing. You about ready?"   
  
Riley finished pulling on his camouflage clothing and put his weapons in their assigned places -- taser on his belt, retractable baton in its ankle holster, pistol in hand with an extra magazine inside his jacket. Buffy loosened her belt a notch and slipped the handle of the hand axe through so that it hung off her right hip. Then she loaded the crossbow and put a few extra quarrels in her jacket pocket.   
  
With eyes peeled and ears perked, they headed into the woods.   
  
They walked for perhaps fifteen minutes, then Riley looked at his watch. "Time to check in," he said, pulling his walkie-talkie from his pocket. He pushed the transmit button and said, "Riley to Giles, over."   
  
He waited for a few seconds. There was no response.   
  
"Giles, this is Riley, over." Again, there was nothing but static.   
  
"Try your cell phone," Buffy suggested.   
  
Riley pulled out his cellular phone and dialed Giles' number. The moment he pushed the SEND button, the phone's LCD read OUT OF RANGE.  
  
"We're not out of range," Riley said. "I've made calls from this area before."   
  
"So what do you think it is?" Buffy asked.   
  
"I don't know. Did you notice how loud the static is from the walkie-talkie? It's like..."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Like we're being jammed."   
  
Buffy felt something unpleasant in the pit of her stomach. "Riley, what the hell is going on? Demons aren't high-tech; most of them can't play Nintendo, much less jam radio signals."  
  
"I know," Riley said. "What do you want to do?"   
  
Buffy was divided. Part of her wanted to go back, get more information from Giles, get more weapons, get the Marines, for crying out loud. Riley could do it; he wasn't officially military anymore, but he still had friends who were.   
  
But the other part of her defeated these arguments as quickly as they were formulated. Giles had already told her everything he knew; she and Riley already had their best weapons with them; and bringing in the government would be just as fruitless as the Initiative had been. They would come, and they would assume, as before, that they had control of the situation. And they would die.   
  
Buffy looked at Riley, and he saw steel in her gaze.   
  
"Let's get this done," she said.   
  
Riley pulled back the slide on his Beretta and chambered a round. Then, silently, they moved further into the forest.   
  
-----  
  
Ghrall and Taghryn watched this scene from the top of a tall tree over half a mile away, using the telescopic function of their Huntmasks. They could hear none of what was said, but they could see that the humans had brought weapons, and that they had just made an attempt to use their wireless communications equipment.   
  
"Now they know they are alone," Ghrall said. He patted the jamming device which hung from the tree branch behind them, drowning out all radio transmissions within its huge radius of effect. "They will not count on others to help them. Now the hunt begins in earnest."   
  
Taghryn turned her head slowly to follow the humans' movements. The short barrel of the plasma weapon on her shoulder turned also, following her gaze.   
  
"As leader of this hunt, you are entitled to your choice of prey," Taghryn said.   
  
"I will take the female, of course," Ghrall replied.   
  
"Then I will take the male for myself. He is large and strong-looking; his skull and vertebrae will hang nicely on the wall of our trophy den."   
  
"There is artist in you, sibling," Ghrall said.   
  
"The Hunt IS art," Taghryn responded. "Art, and science, and life itself."   
  
There was nothing original in what Taghryn said; her statement merely summed up her people's driving philosophy. But, Ghrall knew, his sister's words were not mere reflections of what she had been taught. They came from her heart, her marrow. They were what she was.   
  
"Then follow me," Ghrall said. He pushed off with his powerful legs and sailed through the air to another tree branch, then another, his sister close behind, and even Ghrall, cerebral as he was, could not deny the desire, the need, that flared within him.   
  
The Hunt was calling them.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy was moving slowly through the trees, slowly panning her gaze over the forest in front of her, waiting for the slightest movement or the faintest sound. There were no squirrels or birds, not even a breeze to rustle the branches of the trees, only their footsteps, hers and Riley's. Buffy's ears rang with the silence.   
  
And then she heard it. A deep creaking from somewhere above, as if a branch had suddenly been burdened with a great weight. As Buffy turned her head towards the sound, the dust in the air and the darkness of the heavy leaf cover enabled Buffy to see three narrow beams of red laser light sweeping as one towards her and Riley.   
  
"DOWN!" she shouted.   
  
Buffy's sudden cry startled Riley half out of his wits. He dropped and rolled behind a tree just in time to avoid a bolt of blue energy that exploded where he had been standing. Dry leaves on the ground ignited and floated into the air as more energy bolts followed. The blasts crashed into trees and scorched the ground; only the thick trunk of the tree that Riley was using for cover protected him.   
  
Riley leaped halfway out from his protected position to scan for the enemy. He looked for only a split-second, just long enough to see that the deadly energy came from two separate locations in the branches above him. The ex-soldier ducked back under cover just as a blast struck the side of the tree where he had just been.   
  
"Buffy!" Riley shouted above the din of the exploding blue bolts. "There are two of them!"   
  
Riley ducked out from behind the tree again and fired a few rounds into the treetops, fanning the shots to increase his chances of a hit. He took cover again just in time to avoid being incinerated.   
  
"I know!" Buffy shouted. She was faring no better. She had gotten off one blind shot with the crossbow, but it hadn't slowed the rapid succession of blasts from above.   
  
She kept her eyes upward while her hands, guided by years of training and experience, loaded another bolt into the crossbow. They had finished pulling back the string when Buffy saw a roughly human-shaped outline leap from one branch to another, moving around to her side to get a better shot.   
  
Her hands slapped a bolt into the crossbow and fired automatically. The bolt zipped to its nearly-invisible target and struck.   
  
The creature gave an inhuman roar and leaped upwards, higher into the tree, to hide behind the trunk. The monster paused only for a moment before it began firing again.   
  
The increased range and greater number of intervening branches hampered the being's accuracy, but they also made it impossible for Buffy to aim another shot. And trying to climb the tree would be suicide, Buffy thought.  
  
"Riley!" she shouted. "We have to run!"   
  
"Go!" Riley yelled. He ducked out and fired several more shots in the other creature's direction. The bullets hit nothing, but the threat they posed stopped the monster from shooting for a moment. As soon as Buffy was past him, Riley turned and ran as fast as his highly-conditioned body could carry him, back in the direction of the parking lot.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya perched high in another tree, observing the action. Once again, he found himself being terribly impressed by the prey. The female had sensed Ghrall's advance and avoided a quick death by the Hunter's plasma weapon, even though Ghrall had been as stealthy as possible in his approach. What was more, the human had actually struck Ghrall in the shoulder with one of its incredibly primitive projectiles.   
  
Now, however, the human and its mate were fleeing, and Reghya's children were giving chase. Reghya followed, wanting to make sure that the digital recorders in his Huntmask didn't miss a single detail when Ghrall put his prey down.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy ran as fast as she could through the thick forest, Riley at her heels. She hoped they were going in the right direction. There were no landmarks to follow, and even the sun was blocked out by the thick canopy of leaves overhead.   
  
Blue bolts flew at them from behind, striking all around; they burned trees and superheated the air. Because it was the height of summer, many of the trees were very dry, and readily caught fire when hit by the blasts of energy.   
  
Smokey the Bear's going to be pissed, Buffy thought crazily as she crashed through the forest.   
  
Suddenly, she heard a cry from behind her. Riley.   
  
He was farther behind her now, limping madly towards her, his leg badly burned from a bolt that had struck too close behind him.   
  
"Keep going!" he shouted, then turned and fired a few more blind shots at their pursuers.   
  
But Buffy would have none of it. She ran back, slung Riley's arm around her shoulder, and forced him to keep pace with her as she half-dragged him towards the parking lot. Riley was getting weaker, and the blue bolts were striking closer and closer to their mark.   
  
A familiar voice called from just ahead of her. "Buffy!"  
  
She and Riley burst into the open, finding themselves back in the dirt and gravel of the parking lot. They also saw Xander, Giles, Anya, Willow, and Tara, standing near Giles' car, which was parked next to Riley's. They were all armed except for Tara; Giles and Willow had crossbows, and Xander and Anya had...guns?   
  
An energy bolt struck the ground perhaps three feet to Buffy's right. Anya dropped to a kneeling position behind Giles' car and, with both hands, pointed a revolver towards the trees. She began firing, carefully and deliberately, in the general direction of the blast.   
  
As Anya fired her pistol, Xander broke left and dropped to a prone position on the ground like a sniper. Riley had lost consciousness; with Tara's help, Buffy pushed Riley into the back seat of Giles' car. She turned just in time to see an outline-figure burst forth from the woods.   
  
Suddenly, what appeared to be a bolt of yellow-white lightning sprang from the object in Xander's hands and hit the semi-invisible being dead on.   
  
A blaster, Buffy thought -- Xander had an Initiative blaster!   
  
The effect was incredible. The creature roared again, even louder than before, as electricity raced around its body. It fell to its knees as its invisibility failed, revealing the humanoid underneath.   
  
It was like no creature Buffy had ever seen. It must have been eight feet tall, and it wore a mask that made it look serious and deadly. Its black hair, or what appeared to be hair, was braided into long cornrows that hung halfway down the creatures' back. A gun of some kind was mounted on the creature's right shoulder, projecting three laser beams that moved wherever the creature looked.   
  
Anya pointed her revolver at the creature and pulled the trigger, but the hammer struck the firing pin without effect. All six chambers were empty.   
  
Then a second shadowy outline emerged from the forest. As Xander turned his weapon to blast it, the creature threw a knife straight at Xander's head. Xander raised the blaster to protect himself, and the knife struck the blaster instead, causing it to spark in Xander's hands. Xander leaped to his feet and threw the weapon down, then ran toward Riley's car as the second creature grabbed its stunned companion under the arms and dragged it back into the woods.   
  
"Buffy, come on!" Xander shouted. Buffy knew there wouldn't be room for her in Giles' car, so she grabbed Riley's keys out of his jacket pocket and sprinted to Xander's side. They leaped into Riley's car and took off right behind Giles, whose rusty old euro-bomber was moving as fast as its antiquated engine could manage.   
  
Buffy accelerated and moved up next to Giles' car, then rolled down her window. Anya, who was in the back seat next to Tara, rolled down hers also.   
  
"Whoo! Am I a badass or what?" Anya shouted. "I've watched all of Xander's Dirty Larry movies, but I never knew they were educational!"   
  
"Harry, Anya, Harry!" Xander shouted for what Buffy guessed was not the first time in Xander's über-weird relationship with Anya.   
  
"How is Riley?" Buffy called. She could see that he was still unconscious, probably from shock.   
  
Tara, who was tending Riley, looked up. "It's a bad burn! W-we should get him to the hospital right now!"  
  
Turning off the access road and onto the highway itself, they began the race to Sunnydale General.   
  
-----  
  
Ghrall grumbled as Reghya followed him into the drop ship. The human female's primitive projectile was still sticking out of Ghrall's shoulder. Reghya sat Ghrall down, mixed a healing salve from regen fluid and crushed granite, then pulled the bolt from Ghrall's shoulder and quickly applied the salve.   
  
The pain Ghrall felt when the arrow came out was negligible compared to the anger he felt at himself. He had drastically underestimated the prey on several counts. For one thing, the female's senses were far sharper than he had expected. He had known that the female possessed strength and agility beyond what was normal for her species; he should have guessed that she might have other special abilities.   
  
Furthermore, the humans had more advanced weaponry than the reports of other Hunters had led him to believe. The prone human's electrical weapon had melted the delicate circuitry of Ghrall's sight-shield well past the point of repair, even with Ghrall's considerable technical skills.   
  
Worst of all, Ghrall had not realized how good the humans were at working together, and how fierce they could be in protecting one another.   
  
But, angry though he was, Ghrall was excited, too. After all, the stronger the prey, the better the hunt.   
  
Taghryn entered the drop ship, carrying the jamming device she had retrieved from the treetops. The device had been useful, but it was risky to employ it further; eventually, the humans would track the powerful jamming signal to its source, perhaps revealing the Hunters' presence in the process.   
  
"So what now, sibling?" Taghryn asked.   
  
"We must reacquire the prey," Ghrall said. "We will return to the settled area to look for it when night falls. My sight-shield is destroyed; I must use the darkness instead."  
  
"And when we find the prey, what will we do if it is with its companions?"   
  
"They are armed, capable creatures, Taghryn," Ghrall said, looking her in the eye. "We will kill them all."   
  
END OF PART 3 


	4. Home-Planet Advantage

PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 4  
  
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 4  
Author: Gyrus  
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.   
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.   
Rating: PG, for violence.  
Author's Notes: Sorry this segment is a bit late; the holidays put me behind schedule. This is the second-to-last chapter.   
  
-----  
  
The Emergency Room doctor emerged into the hospital hallway, where Buffy, Giles, Willow, Tara, Xander, and Anya were assembled.   
  
"Your friend was in shock," the doctor said, "but he's stabilized now. His leg will need a skin graft, but he should make a full recovery."   
  
Everyone exhaled at once with relief. Riley had gone into shock after being burned by the powerful energy weapon used by the beings in the forest. They had all been afraid that they might not have gotten him to the ER in time.   
  
"He'll be unconscious for a while longer," the doctor continued. "You said he has no family in the area?"   
  
"No, it's pretty much just us," Buffy replied.  
  
"All right. I'll call you when he wakes up."  
  
"Thank you."   
  
"How did he get that burn, anyway?"   
  
"Umm..." Buffy wracked her brain for a plausible excuse.   
  
Xander spoke up. "He was using an acetylene torch in the garage, and I guess the line had a leak. Gotta take care of your tools."  
  
Buffy sighed inwardly with relief. There were advantages to having a friend in the construction business.   
  
"I see," the doctor said. "I need to get back to your friend. I'll call you." The doc walked back through the double doors to the patient area, and the group followed Buffy out of the building.   
  
Fifteen minutes later, they were back at Giles' place.   
  
"So you guys think these monsters are aliens?" Buffy asked.   
  
"That would be consistent with the high level of technology they seem to possess," Giles said, "as well as the lack of mention of them in the Diaries prior to the seventeenth century."   
  
"I guess somebody up there doesn't like us," Xander said.   
  
"Or Buffy, anyway," Anya added.   
  
"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Willow said. "If they were demons, yeah -- Buffy's, like, their natural enemy. But why would space monsters be out to get her?"   
  
"It can't be a coincidence that they chose the Slayer as their target," Giles said.   
  
Buffy, who had been staring down at the coffee table, suddenly looked up. "The cemetery," she said. "I felt something weird at the cemetery last night, like something was watching me."   
  
"Watching you fight the vampires," Giles said, completing Buffy's thought.   
  
"So they picked the hardest person to kill they could find," Xander added. "I guess these guys like a challenge."   
  
"That's exactly what it is," Buffy said. "This is a game to them, a, a sport. Kill the Slayer, bring back her head, impress your friends."   
  
"OK," Xander said, "so maybe we know what they want. But what do we do about it?"   
  
"We are at a distinct disadvantage in at least one respect," Giles said. "Their weapons are far superior to ours."   
  
"Then we've got to get them into a tight space," Buffy said. "Somewhere where they can't blast away from afar."   
  
"And somewhere w-we know," Tara said.   
  
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "We've got the home-planet advantage; let's use it."   
  
"It has to be away from people," Buffy added.   
  
"How about the Initiative caves?" Anya asked. She turned to Buffy. "I mean, Adam managed to hide there for a long time without you ever finding him. Well, except for that one time when he beat the stuffing out of you, but-"  
  
"We don't know the caves well enough," Giles cut in. "It would be too easy to get lost, or separated."   
  
"The high school!" Willow said suddenly. The others looked at her.   
  
"I mean, all of us except Tara know it at least a little," she continued. "There's nobody in it, and there's lots of rooms to hide in."   
  
"I don't know," Buffy said. "There's a lot of long hallways. And too many rooms with only one exit."   
  
"Not a problem," Xander said. "Any rooms that don't already have holes between 'em, we can just make one with a sledgehammer. As long as we don't touch the support beams, we can mess with the place as much as we want."   
  
"That still leaves the hallway issue," Buffy said. "Those blast-o guns have serious range."   
  
"They're basically energy weapons, right?" Willow asked. "Magic is all about energy. There's got to be a spell we could use to turn them off, or blow them up, or something."  
  
Tara turned to Willow. "What about Marsyas' Reflection?"  
  
Willow frowned. "Isn't that to keep you from being turned into a toad?"   
  
"It reflects spells back on the caster," Tara responded. "M-maybe it'll do the same for the aliens' zappers."   
  
"Right," Willow said, looking pensive. She suddenly brightened and turned back to Tara. "And if we combine it with a glamour...This is good! Let's go to the magic shop!"  
  
"Do it," Buffy said. "Xander, grab Riley's equipment and some tools and head for the school, then pick a place inside to start setting up."  
  
"Right," Xander said, rising to his feet.   
  
"I need to call my mom, tell her to get out of the house. If the aliens have been watching me between last night and this morning, then they know where I live."   
  
"Good thinking," Giles responded.   
  
"It's just a precaution," Buffy explained. "I don't think they'd hurt Mom. These things aren't here to hunt bunnies; they want something that fights back."   
  
Anya looked at Buffy with irritation. "Oh, right," she said with irony, "'cause bunnies NEVER fight back. They just sit there on the lawn, watching you with their enormous, oddly-placed eyes, listening with their huge ears, waiting for the right moment to plunge their abnormally large, razor-sharp teeth-"  
  
"Anya!" Buffy barked. "Can we focus, please?"   
  
"Oh, fine, let's all worry about YOUR problems. As usual."   
  
Buffy started to say something more to Anya, then realized the futility of it and turned back to the others. "Giles, I need you to do a little driving around town. Starting with the gas station."   
  
"Why?" Giles asked.   
  
"It's only polite," Buffy said mysteriously. "We can't plan this big party and not send any invitations."   
  
-----  
  
Spike paced furiously in the stone confines of his crypt. The waiting was driving him mad. He had a plan, he had the tools, he just needed the sun to hurry up and bloody SET so he could do what he had been waiting all day to do.   
  
He was going to put up a TV antenna.   
  
Reception in the crypt had always been bad, but today he hadn't been able to get a single channel. There was enough snow on his screen to cover Mount Fuji.   
  
At least PASSIONS is in reruns, he thought.   
  
Spike opened the door to his crypt just a crack for perhaps the twentieth time that hour and, finally, decided that it was safe to go outside. He dragged with him an old antenna that he'd found at the junkyard and a set of tools that someone had left unattended in the back of a pickup. Some people just didn't deserve to have possessions.   
  
Spike vaulted onto the flat roof of the crypt and looked at it. He figured that, if he put the antenna right in the middle and didn't raise it up too high, no one would be able to see it from the ground. If there was one thing a crypt didn't need, it was that lived-in look.   
  
Just then, Spike heard a noise from above, as if something large were moving in the great tree that overhung the crypt. Spike was trying to think of something suitably threatening to shout when he was suddenly thrown down and pinned. He was trapped by a web of wires, held down by tiny metal spikes. Only his head and left arm were free.   
  
"Bloody 'ell!" he shouted, out of both anger and fear. He didn't know of any demons that used metal nets. And if the Initiative was doing a reunion tour and had come to muck with his brain some more, there wouldn't be much he could do about it.   
  
Suddenly, a masked face leaned over him, long black braids hanging down from the large head, filling most of Spike's field of view.   
  
If it's the Initiative, Spike thought, they've changed their dress code a bit.   
  
Then the masked creature reached up and slowly removed its mask.   
  
The face underneath was like nothing Spike had ever seen. The eyes were dark and set deep in their sockets; the mouth was square, with long, jagged teeth. The skin was a mottled black-and-white.   
  
Spike didn't know what to think. He'd never seen a demon like this.   
  
"You..." Spike breathed, "are one ugly motherf-MMMPH!" Spike was cut off as the creature pushed its mask onto Spike's face.   
  
Through the eyes of the mask, Spike could see a picture of a girl. Though the picture was distorted and oddly-colored to Spike's eyes, it was obvious who the girl was.   
  
"The Slayer," Spike said.   
  
"SLAY-ERR," the creature responded, testing the word. Then it said, "WHERE?"  
  
The creature reached down and touched the mask. The image before Spike's eyes changed to what looked like a satellite photo of Sunnydale. Three sites were marked in red -- the Pine Street cemetery, the ice rink, and the Slayer's house.   
  
"Guess you tried those already, eh?" Spike said. His interest was piqued. This nasty beast wasn't looking for the Slayer in order to borrow her mascara; it was out for her blood.   
  
Spike pulled the mask off his face and held it out to the creature. "Why don't I help you find her?" he offered.   
  
The creature tilted its head in apparent confusion. Spike pointed to the monster with his free hand, then made little walking motions with his fingers, then pointed to himself. "You. Follow. Me," Spike said, slowly and loudly.   
  
The being reached for something on its belt - some sort of very sharp instrument, which it held in front of Spike's face. Spike was a bit nervous, until the monster started cutting the wires, one by one, freeing Spike from the net.   
  
Spike stood up and dusted himself off. For just a moment, he considered making a run for it, until he realized that there was another creature standing right behind him, virtually identical to the first. Spike doubted he could get past both of them.   
  
"Right then," he said. "Let's see -- university's out for the summer; won't find her there. We'll try the Watcher's flat."  
  
The vampire and the two aliens dropped down from the roof of the mausoleum. For the first time, Spike noticed how big they were, and how impressive their array of weapons was. Each of them had a shoulder-mounted gun of some kind, plus all manner of knives and other pointy-looking weapons, some of which Spike couldn't even identify.   
  
"Wait here," Spike said, raising his palm in a 'stop' gesture. He quickly ducked into the mausoleum.   
  
"Gonna need supplies," he said to himself. "Let's see, bag o' crisps," - he grabbed a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips from the top of his mini-fridge - "ah, and beer." There were a couple left in the 'fridge; he took both of them. Then he picked up a lawn chair he'd stolen from someone's back yard and walked outside, where the two humanoids stood, waiting. Even though they were masked, Spike got the impression that they were glowering at him.   
  
"Off we go," Spike said with a smile.   
  
This could not be more perfect, Spike thought as he began to lead the monsters towards Giles' house. A nice cold beer, a handful of crisps...and the Slayer slaughtered like a pig before my eyes. It's the greatest show on bloody Earth.   
  
-----  
  
Ghrall and Taghryn followed the cold human through the streets of the human settlement. Taghryn was hidden by her sight-shield, but Ghrall's had been damaged beyond repair. Ghrall was forced to move stealthily, hiding behind trees and buildings, to avoid human notice. This made it difficult to follow the cold human, which simply walked down the street like its warm counterparts.   
  
Somewhere behind, well out of sight, their father, Reghya, followed. Now that the hunt had begun in earnest, he had been keeping his distance, not wanting to interfere.   
  
Ghrall's method of tracking was sensible enough: to find a predator, follow its prey. Ghrall had learned a few words of the language spoken in this region of Earth, which made it possible to communicate with the prey in question. It had also enabled Ghrall and Taghryn to learn their quarry's name -- Slayer.   
  
The cold human finally led them to a building with several entrances; Ghrall guessed the building contained living space for several humans or human families. The cold human pointed to one of the entrances and said something unintelligible.   
  
Ghrall and Taghryn approached the entrance, and noticed something - a piece of paper, folded many times and attached to the door with a bit of plastic adhesive. On the surface of the folded paper, someone had drawn three red dots in the shape of a triangle.   
  
Ghrall turned to Taghryn. "A message for us," he said.   
  
Taghryn pulled the paper from the door and unfolded it. It was a map of the settlement. The map was printed, but someone had hand-drawn a red circle around a large building in the center of town.   
  
"They want us to go to this place," Taghryn said. "Slayer must be waiting for us there."  
  
"It is a trap," her brother replied. Records from previous hunts showed that humans had a great love of traps and lures.   
  
"Of course," said Taghryn. "But we will go?"   
  
"Oh, yes," Ghrall answered. He sprung upwards, grabbing a drainpipe and easily climbing to the roof of the building. Taghryn followed as the cold human on the ground gazed up at them.   
  
From the rooftop, the two aliens could see their destination. The building was large and looked like it had been severely damaged, perhaps by fire. An odd choice of hiding place.   
  
Taghryn pointed at the blackened structure. "The hunt will end there," she said. "I can feel it."  
  
"There will be many surprises in there," Ghrall said.   
  
"Yes," Taghryn agreed. "But we have surprises, too."   
  
They bounded to the next rooftop, then to a tree, then to the ground, making their way towards the ruined building with single-minded purpose. The time for planning and tracking was over.   
  
Now was the time for killing.   
  
END OF PART 4  



	5. Hunting in Circles

PREDATOR VS. SLAYER, PART 5 (CONCLUSION)  
  
Title: Predator vs. Slayer, Part 5 (Conclusion)  
Author: Gyrus  
Email: gyrus1001@hotmail.com  
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the creation of Joss Whedon and the property of Fox Television. The story itself is my own.   
Summary: A trio of alien hunters pursues the ultimate human prize.   
Rating: PG, for violence.  
Author's Notes: Finally -- the last chapter. Hope you enjoy it.   
  
-----  
  
At the northern end of what was once the second-floor hallway of Sunnydale High School, Buffy, Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya stood in a tight circle on the blackened floor. They spoke in whispers.   
  
"Xander, are we all set?" Buffy asked.   
  
"Completely," he answered. "The north stairway's blocked off, and the front stairs have a nasty surprise waiting."  
  
"How're you fixed for weapons?"  
  
"The blaster is toast - you just can't steal decent high-tech weapons from the government anymore - but I have all of Riley's stuff. And Anya's packin'."   
  
"This is so exciting," Anya said, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "The space monsters will look at me and go, 'Look, it's little defenseless Anya,' and then, POW! A surprised alien with a hole in it." She held up her revolver. "You know, if more women had had these in the old days, I wouldn't have been nearly so busy."   
  
Xander looked slightly aghast. "If the NRA needs a spokesdemon," he said, "I'll have them give you a call."  
  
"Just remember," Buffy cut in. "No guns after the first part of the plan. With all of us running around in here..."  
  
"I hear you," Xander replied. "That's a nice piece you've got, yourself." He pointed to the four-foot-long, two-handed sword that hung from Buffy's hip.   
  
"It's from Giles' special collection," Buffy said. It was a modern replica of an Italian sword from the 1400s - in other words, a 15th-century weapon made with 20th-century steel.   
  
"Careful," Xander said, "you'll make Mr. Pointy jealous."  
  
Buffy turned to Willow and Tara. "Are you two ready?" she asked.   
  
"Yeah," Willow answered. She held up a small cloth bag containing a variety of herbs and a lock of Buffy's hair. Tara's held up a similar bag, but which included a few strands of Riley's hair instead of Buffy's.   
  
Willow didn't say anything more, which Buffy found a little troubling, given Willow's tendency to babble in the face of scariness. Buffy figured Willow must be focused on the task ahead; the spells Willow and Tara were about to cast were complex and would require their complete concentration.   
  
Just then, there was a chirping sound from Buffy's back pocket. She was carrying Riley's cell phone.   
  
Buffy answered. "Yeah?"  
  
"Buffy, it's Giles. The map is gone from my door; I imagine the aliens will arrive in the next few minutes."   
  
"Thanks," Buffy responded.  
  
"I'll be there as soon as I can. Be careful," Giles said, and hung up.   
  
Buffy turned to the others. "Game time. Let's get to our spots."   
  
She wished she could think of something more to say. But what would it be? Thank you for risking your lives to help me - again? You're my best friends in the whole world? Please don't get killed?   
  
She looked at each of them for one unnecessary moment.   
  
"Good luck," she finally said.   
  
-----  
  
Willow watched as the others filed out of the hallway - all except for her and Tara. The first part of this plan was theirs alone to carry out.   
  
They waited for two minutes. The spells would be a tremendous drain on both of them, and they wanted to begin only when the aliens were well on their way to the school.   
  
It was the longest two minutes Willow could remember. She stood at the end of the hallway, staring at the second hand on her watch.   
  
Finally, it was time.   
  
Willow swallowed, then took the bag of herbs and hair and touched it to her forehead, her chest, and her stomach, just below the navel. Tara did the same, but never looked at Willow once, nor Willow at Tara. A glamour could be ruined if anyone glimpsed the caster while the spell was being woven.   
  
Eyes closed, Willow reached out her hand and found Tara's. Willow could feel her own magic flowing and mixing with Tara's, growing stronger; Willow knew that the connection between them could increase their power exponentially.  
  
The two witches began to chant in the quietest of whispers, and in perfect synchrony. It was the same words, over and over, invoking the benevolent powers of an ancient Sumerian deity.   
  
"Goddess Inanna, work my will, protect me from all harm or ill. Goddess Inanna, work my will..."  
  
-----  
  
Taghryn and Ghrall entered the school through a side window, cautious of the traps they knew awaited them. The question was, where in this large, ruined structure would the traps lie? More importantly, where would the prey be?   
  
They walked carefully down the hall. Reghya was somewhere nearby, recording the hunt, but not wanting to distract his children from their work.   
  
As Taghryn looked around, she realized that the humans had been clever in choosing this site. The extensive damage to the building made the external fixtures unstable; the Hunters could not climb to the second level without risking a fall from a damaged drainpipe or a loose piece of mortar. What was more, one of the two stairways was blocked by rubble.   
  
Taghryn looked at the main stairs, which appeared clear. She reached over and touched Ghrall's hand to communicate with him in the silent stalking language.   
  
Only one way up, she said. I don't like it.   
  
Ghrall replied, There may be more options. We will look for them before taking the obvious path.   
  
They moved carefully along the hall. A minute later, Taghryn took Ghrall's hand again.   
  
What is that? she fingered, pointing to a rectangle of metal recessed into a wall.  
  
Ghrall quickly saw what Taghryn was talking about. It was clearly a door, but it was solid metal. All the other doors in the building were wooden and had windows.   
  
The two Hunters moved to the metal door and tried to push it forward, until they realized that the door was designed to slide sideways. The mechanism that accomplished this was destroyed, so Taghryn used her knife to pry the door open far enough that she could wrap her powerful fingers around the edge and pull.   
  
Inside was a tiny room. There were controls of some sort on the wall next to the door.   
  
It must be a device for moving between levels, said Ghrall. He pushed a few of the buttons on the control panel, but to no effect.  
  
It is inoperable, Ghrall signed.   
  
Taghryn pressed gently against the ceiling with her hands, searching. Her efforts were rewarded when a section of the ceiling lifted up.   
  
She peered upwards through the square hole she had created. Once Taghryn was satisfied that no dangers waited above, she pulled herself up through the hole and gestured for Ghrall to follow.   
  
Now they stood in a vertical shaft. The height of it was spanned by metal cables, connecting the conveyance below to the ceiling above.   
  
Taghryn tested the cables and found that they would easily hold her weight. She and Ghrall climbed them as quietly as they could until they reached the second level, where they found another sliding door like the one below. Using her knife again, Taghryn pried the door open just a crack and peeked through.   
  
All she could see were a few feet of damaged floor and a broken wooden door on the other side. The walls adjacent to the doorway were lined with many upright metal containers, their doors bent and broken. A bank of storage units, perhaps.   
  
Ghrall climbed up next to Taghryn and looked through the door, also.   
  
We need to go out there, he signaled.   
  
Taghryn, still hidden by her sight-shield, went first. She pulled the elevator door open far enough to step through and immediately noticed an odd smell, like medicinal plants. Then Taghryn stepped through the door and quickly looked both ways down the hall.   
  
Much to Taghryn's surprise, the prey stood waiting at the northern end: the light-haired female, who was Ghrall's quarry, and the large male, who was hers.   
  
Ghrall moved into the hallway next to Taghryn. Pointing at the two humans, he shouted "There!" and brought his plasma weapon around to fire.   
  
Taghryn knew something was wrong. The odd smell, and the fact that the prey wasn't moving or attacking, all spelled danger.   
  
"Wait, there is-" she started, but Ghrall fired before she could stop him. The bolt of blue energy flashed out and struck the human female in the chest.   
  
And bounced back.  
  
Ghrall never had time to move; he could only watch for the microsecond it took for the blast to return along its original path. Then his ears rang with the sound of his plasma weapon exploding as the energy bolt struck it. Searing pain enveloped Ghrall's shoulder and the right side of his face.   
  
Taghryn saw the two humans at the end of the corridor suddenly transform into two completely different ones - both females, from what Taghryn could tell. They did not appear severely injured, but they slumped to the floor nonetheless.   
  
Then another pair of humans leaped out from a doorway near the end of the hallway and began shooting with firearms. Taghryn pushed Ghrall out of the way, back into the elevator shaft; she leaped through a doorway on the other side of the hall. Nonetheless, Ghrall was hit in the leg and abdomen by two projectiles before getting out of harm's way. None of the bullets hit Taghryn - her sight-shield made her more difficult to target.  
  
They have many tricks, Taghryn thought as the bullets stopped flying. I will show them one of mine.   
  
She pulled a dull metal sphere from her belt and, reaching only her hand and wrist out through the doorway, tossed the sphere into the corridor.   
  
-----  
  
Anya stood with her revolver in both hands, arms straight out, watching the corridor. Xander desperately fiddled with Riley's Beretta. The gun had jammed after only two or three shots; Xander wasn't sure if the gun had screwed up somehow, or if he just hadn't loaded it right. His military know-how seemed to be getting rustier all the time.   
  
"I know I hit it at least once before it went down the elevator shaft," Anya said excitedly, never taking her eyes off the hallway. "Maybe we should go after it. You know, take it out, drop the hammer, blow it aw-"   
  
"There's still one more of those things up here, Anya," Xander interrupted in a loud whisper. "I think I saw it for a second. I was going to take a shot at it, but then Mr. Beretta here got constipated."   
  
"Eew," said Anya.   
  
Suddenly, there was a clank of metal against the hallway floor. Looking towards the sound, Xander and Anya saw two things - Buffy, stepping out of her hiding place at the far end of the hall, and a metal ball with many small holes in it that rolled out of the doorway across the hall from the elevator. The ball began spraying some kind of gas or smoke, thick and black, into the air. Buffy looked at it with furrowed brow, until the smoke blocked Xander and Anya's view of her.   
  
"What the hell?" Xander said as the smoke oozed towards them. He had gotten his gun unjammed and was just about to chamber a round when a huge, humanoid blur leaped out of the smoke and knocked him down.   
  
Anya raised her pistol, but the barely-visible alien turned and backhanded her, knocking her to the floor, too. Her gun skittered down the hall into the smoke.   
  
Xander got to his feet just in time to see his assailant draw a wicked-looking metal knife, the shiny blade far more visible than the hand that held it. The alien slashed horizontally at Xander's midsection, and Xander had to stumble backwards to get out of the way.   
  
Anya glanced at the smoky hallway, then at Xander. Her gun was gone, and her boyfriend was about to be julienned by a very large extraterrestrial.   
  
There was only one thing to do.   
  
Anya got up fast and ran headlong at Xander's attacker. "YAAAAGH!" she shouted as she leaped up and landed on the alien's back. She clung tightly with her legs, trying to choke the creature with one arm and pulling at what she assumed was its hair with the other. The humanoid staggered and spun for a moment, trying to dislodge her, then recovered from its surprise and brought its knife arm around to stab her. Anya was forced to let go and fall backwards to avoid the blade.   
  
Anya landed painfully on her tailbone and scuttled backwards, retreating from the huge alien. It didn't chase her; instead, the creature raised its arm to throw its knife at her.   
  
Suddenly, the monster roared as Xander pressed Riley's taser into the creature's back. Electricity coursed around the alien's body as its invisibility device shorted out. The humanoid's huge body and masked face became visible.   
  
The creature lashed backwards with a kick, catching Xander square in the chest and sending him straight into the wall behind him. Bits of burnt plaster flew when Xander hit, then settled around him as he collapsed to the floor, unconscious.   
  
The creature turned on Anya. Even with the mask on, it looked pissed.   
  
-----  
  
Spike ran in through the main entrance of the school building. He had his beer and potato chips in one hand, his lawn chair in the other. The aliens had left Spike behind; he hoped he hadn't missed anything.   
  
Shouts and thumps drifted down from somewhere upstairs. Spike booked down the hall to the main stairs, kicked the stairwell door open, and ran up the first few steps.   
  
He turned the corner on a small landing and dashed up the next flight of stairs, not noticing when his ankle caught a tightly-stretched length of fishing line. Spike became aware that something was wrong only when a metallic booming sound caused him to look up. Several 55-gallon oil drums were rolling down the stairs at him, bouncing loudly over one another as they came.   
  
Spike turned and started to run back down the stairs, but it was too late. A barrel hit him in the small of his back and squashed him against the floor at the bottom of the stairs. The other barrels, like enthusiastic defensive linemen, piled on top of him.   
  
Bollocks, Spike thought. I'm going to miss everything.   
  
Spike could barely shift the barrels on top of him, even with his superhuman strength. The drums seemed to be filled with rocks, or maybe pieces of broken mortar from the wrecked school building.   
  
"Hey!" Spike shouted, struggling harder against the barrels. "Big masky guys! Don't start killing 'er without me!"   
  
-----  
  
Buffy moved as quickly as she could through the black smoke that filled the hallway, unable to see more than two feet in front of her. She could hear yells from Xander, Anya, and the alien somewhere up ahead.   
  
Buffy emerged from the smoke just in time to see the alien, now fully visible, advancing Anya with its knife. Anya was on the floor, trying to crawl backwards through a classroom door. Xander lay unconscious in the opposite doorway. Willow was slumped next to Tara against the back wall, completely out and looking as if she had a bad sunburn. Tara was still moving, and appeared to be trying to pull Willow through the doorway Xander was in, but Tara didn't even have the strength to move her own body, much less Willow's.   
  
"Hey! Space face!" Buffy shouted at the alien, drawing her long sword.   
  
In one motion, the creature turned and whipped its knife at Buffy's chest.   
  
-----  
  
Giles yanked up the parking brake handle of his Citroen in what was once the teachers' parking lot of Sunnydale High School. Then he grabbed the hand crossbow and spiny-headed morningstar that occupied the passenger's seat. Giles could hear sounds of a fight coming from the second floor. He ran through the main entrance to the school and headed for the stairs.   
  
Suddenly, one of the huge masked aliens stepped out of the elevator shaft.   
  
Expecting a blast from the creature's energy weapon, Giles leaped sideways and took cover in a janitor's closet whose door had fallen off long ago. When no blasts came, Giles peeked out into the hallway.   
  
The alien approached, but it was limping; fluorescent green-yellow blood oozed from wounds in its leg and belly. The creature was burned on half of its face, and somewhat dazed. Giles deduced that Willow and Tara's spell must have worked, reflecting the alien's energy blast back on its source just as it would a malevolent spell.   
  
Seizing the opportunity, Giles stepped into the hallway and fired his hand crossbow at the alien. The monster saw Giles and tried to dodge the bolt, but the alien was too slow; the small arrow struck it in the chest. But the creature continued to advance.   
  
Giles backed away, trying to load another bolt into his small crossbow. The alien removed a metallic cylinder from its belt and extended it into a pole, perhaps seven feet long. A U-shaped, barbed tip emerged from one end.   
  
A spear, Giles thought. He looked down at the morningstar that hung from his belt and suddenly wished that he had brought a weapon with more reach.   
  
Giles dropped his crossbow and turned to run, but the creature lurched forward and jabbed with the spear. The tip caught Giles in the back of his calf, making a pair of deep wounds. Giles grunted with pain and fell to the ground.   
  
Oh, good show, Rupert, he thought crazily as the alien pulled back for another strike. When you get to heaven, remember to tell them E.T. sent you.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy almost died.   
  
The alien's knife sped straight towards Buffy's heart; only Buffy's Slayer reflexes got her long sword up in time to partially deflect the spinning blade. But it was an incomplete block; instead of penetrating Buffy's chest, the knife bounced handle-first into Buffy's forehead. The Slayer reeled backwards, stunned.   
  
Her assailant cocked its head slightly, following her. In the smoke that hung in the air, Buffy could see the three glowing red beams of the alien's laser sights, moving towards her in a slow motion arc like a deadly searchlight. Buffy tried to move her legs, to run, to fall, but whoever operated the switchboard between her brain and her body seemed to be out to lunch.   
  
There was a loud bang, a puff of plaster dust erupted from the corridor wall.   
  
Buffy's world sped up again. She turned her head to see that Xander had just fired his Beretta at the alien. He had apparently regained consciousness and crawled to his dropped weapon, but had been too woozy to aim properly.   
  
The alien turned its head to look towards the noise, and its laser sights turned with it.   
  
Buffy ran forward, raised the long sword, and swung it at the alien's neck with a cry. But instead of beheading the creature, the sword blade struck the base of the plasma weapon on the humanoid's shoulder.   
  
Sparks flew. The electrical discharge blinded and stung both alien and Slayer, forcing them apart.   
  
The alien recovered first. It reached one arm back between its shoulder blades and drew a short, single-edged sword. The weapon reminded Buffy of an item from Giles' collection, one used by hunters in Medieval Germany to finish off wounded animals. In other hands, the sword might have been less than a match for Buffy's much bigger blade. But the alien's superior height and reach would easily compensate.  
  
Buffy glanced quickly at her friends. Xander had collapsed again. Tara was still moving and having a bit more success dragging herself and Willow away from the fight. Anya, emboldened by Tara's example, had crept over to where Xander lay and was to help him through the doorway next to him. Buffy knew that Xander had knocked a hole in the exterior wall of that room and hung a rope ladder through it for escape purposes.   
  
Buffy turned back towards the alien.   
  
"Just you and me then," she said, raising her sword. A familiar feeling of cautious excitement filled her, as it often did when she faced a particularly dangerous enemy alone.   
  
"Let's get it on," she said.   
  
-----  
  
Giles rolled out of the way and onto his back as the spear-wielding alien stabbed at him. The ex-Watcher still had his morningstar in hand.   
  
Despite his pain and fear, Giles' years of weapons training suddenly came back to him. Giles grasped the butt of his morningstar with one hand and the top of the shaft with the other; when the alien stabbed at him again, Giles used the shaft of his weapon to knock the spear tip aside.   
  
Giles let go of his morningstar and used both hands to grasp the end of the spear. The alien instinctively tried to yank its weapon away from Giles; instead, the creature's great strength pulled the former Watcher to his feet.   
  
Giles lashed out with his good leg and kicked the large humanoid in its wounded thigh. The creature growled loudly with pain and buckled slightly. Giles yanked at the spear, then lunged forward with his good leg and pushed the monster with both hands. The creature fell heavily, surprised.   
  
The ex-librarian limped past the monster and grabbed the hand crossbow off the floor. He could hear the monster rising to its feet behind him.   
  
Giles forced himself to stay calm. He pulled back the bowstring and hooked it in the ready position, then reached into his jacket pocket for a bolt.   
  
Bloody hell, Giles thought. Most of the crossbow bolts were broken from his fall.  
  
The creature was limping towards him, now maybe fifteen feet away. Giles found one good bolt and set it in place. Then he turned around.   
  
The alien was right there, holding the spear in one hand. It pulled back to stab Giles through the chest.   
  
Giles fired.   
  
The small bolt caught the alien through the throat. The creature gave a gurgling roar and fell, dropping the spear and scrabbling at the bolt in its neck.   
  
Giles had done all he could. If the monster died, good; if it didn't, Giles was in no shape for a rematch.   
  
Cursing his situation, Giles limped for the exit.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya also cursed and ran down the hall towards Ghrall. The older Hunter had done his duty and recorded the fight, but now he had to help his child.   
  
Unfortunately, Ghrall had panicked and pulled the projectile from his throat, causing the wound to bleed profusely. Reghya tore a strip from his vest and pressed it against Ghrall's neck, but it was too late. The combined blood loss from Ghrall's various wounds would soon kill the younger Hunter.   
  
Ghrall could not speak; his vocal cords were too badly damaged. Instead, he clumsily pulled off his Huntmask with one hand and grasped Reghya's hand with the other, using the stalking language.   
  
It was a good hunt, Ghrall said.   
  
"Yes," Reghya replied, trying to control the sorrow in his voice. "You did well."   
  
Not well enough, Ghrall replied. I am sorry.  
  
Reghya was moved. Ghrall was less concerned with his own death than with his performance in the Hunt.   
  
Ghrall reached over to his wrist and pressed the button that released the yuragh, the hunt-leader's band, from his arm.   
  
This is Taghryn's now, Ghrall said.   
  
As Reghya held Ghrall's hand, Ghrall closed his eyes, and his body was wracked with the final spasms of death.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy and Taghryn circled carefully, swords at the ready. Buffy held her long sword's handle over her right shoulder; the alien kept its own weapon high above its head.   
  
The alien took a huge step forward and brought its sword down in a diagonal cut. Buffy raised the handle of her long sword over her head and angled the blade forward and down. The alien's blade struck Buffy's and slid off, deflected.   
  
Continuing the motion, Buffy brought her sword around behind her and made her own diagonal strike. The alien leaped backwards out of the way, but still received a superficial cut across its upper arm.   
  
Buffy kept up her attack, sweeping her blade back up again along the same diagonal line. This time, the alien was ready; it stepped back again and whipped its own sword sideways, catching Buffy's from behind. The combined force of their attacks knocked the sword out of Buffy's hand.   
  
"Oops," she said, moving backwards as her assailant raised its blade. "Um, time out?"   
  
-----  
  
Reghya climbed the back stairs, almost completely invisible; his lack of weapons simplified the outline of his body and made it easier for the sight-shield to conceal. The yuragh in his hand was the only visible sign of his presence.   
  
He had to give the yuragh to Taghryn. She was hunt leader now; it was her right and duty to wear it.   
  
And, if necessary, to use it.   
  
-----  
  
The alien swung its sword horizontally at Buffy's head; she ducked just in time to avoid it. But the slash was only meant as a distraction; the giant humanoid followed it with a roundhouse kick which thumped against Buffy's ribs. Buffy stumbled sideways, pain lancing through her side.   
  
The creature's sword looped around and cut again, straight down. Buffy leaped forward and to the right, avoiding the blow. Now in punching range, she slammed her right fist into the alien's stomach, then a hard left into the creature's chest.   
  
But the alien was not deterred. It smashed the heel of its free hand into Buffy's chin, sending her flying down the hall. Her butt, back, and head all hit the blackened floor simultaneously.   
  
Dazed and weakened, Buffy watched the alien approach. It lifted its sword for the finishing blow. Suddenly, it spoke, its voice inhumanly deep.   
  
"DIE," it said. And swung.   
  
With tremendous speed, Buffy rolled onto her side and out of the blade's path. She felt the vibration in the floor as it hit. Then she rolled back and kicked upward. Her foot hit the alien's sword arm in the wrist; there was a wet cracking sound. The alien dropped its sword and backed off as Buffy sprang to her feet.   
  
"Sorry," Buffy said. "I can't die until I've seen Graceland."   
  
She leaped into the air and kicked the alien in the chest. Then she landed and raked her hand across the creature's face, tearing off its mask. The alien's deep-set eyes looked back at her, filled with pure, feral killing instinct.   
  
The creature threw a hook punch at Buffy with its good arm; Buffy ducked and came back with an elbow to its solar plexus. The alien staggered backwards and held up its bad wrist. A pair of short, curved blades sprung from the alien's sleeve.   
  
Buffy charged, but the alien slashed with its retractable blades and caught her shoulder, cutting her deeply. Wincing, Buffy kicked at the monster's stomach, pushing the alien back; then she leaped up and spun in a crescent kick that caught the monster in the head. The alien turned all the way around and lashed out backhand, trying to cut Buffy with the back side of its claw-like blades. Buffy caught the creature's wrist and twisted.   
  
The creature fell to its knees; it roared with agony as the broken bones in its forearm scraped against one another.   
  
"OK," Buffy said. "Here's the deal. I'm going to let you up, and you're going to go back to your planet - where apparently every day is a bad hair day - and tell all the other aliens that it's not 'human season' on Earth anymore. Got it?"   
  
The alien said nothing; it only grunted with pain.   
  
Buffy talked slower, trying to make it understand. "Go home. Never come back. Do you understand?"   
  
She didn't see the knife the alien drew from its boot until the blade was speeding towards Buffy's throat.   
  
Buffy caught the alien's knife arm just in time; the knifepoint stopped less than an inch from her neck. The alien, still on its knees, tried to force the knife towards her chest. Buffy's other hand released the alien's broken arm and grabbed the good one; now it was one arm against two.   
  
She turned the knife and pushed with all her strength. The creature resisted; Buffy kicked it hard in the stomach. The alien lost control over the knife for a split second, and the point drove straight into the huge being's chest.   
  
The creature screeched loudly and struck at Buffy wildly with its open hand. It slammed into Buffy's face; her head snapped painfully to the side.  
  
Then the monster fell over dead.   
  
-----  
  
Xander, Anya, Willow, and Tara, all in various states of injury and exhaustion, dragged themselves back into the hallway.   
  
"Did we win?" Anya asked, her voice all too lively.   
  
Buffy looked up. "Unless this thing can bounce back from a knife through the heart, I'm thinking yes," she said.   
  
"But where's the other one?" Willow asked.   
  
Buffy insisted on searching for it alone. The others were too badly incapacitated to help, anyway, except Anya, who was nonetheless perfectly willing to stay out of harm's way.   
  
Buffy slid down the cable in the elevator, thinking it wise to follow the same path the aliens had come. She discovered the second dead alien in the first-floor hallway, and spotted Giles limping towards the exit.   
  
"Giles!" she shouted. "We did it!"   
  
Giles turned around. "The other creature is dead?" he asked, pain and hope both evident on his face.   
  
"As disco," Buffy replied.   
  
"Well done," Giles said. He started to limp towards her.   
  
Buffy glanced at the lifeless humanoid at her feet. "You, too," she said.   
  
Buffy looked towards the front stairwell, where she could see part of one of Xander's 55-gallon drums through the doorway. "Huh," she said as she and Giles made their way towards the stairs. "One of the aliens must have set off the trap without getting caught in it."  
  
"Slayer? Is that you?" a voice echoed from the stairwell.   
  
Buffy recognized the accent immediately. "Spike?" she called.   
  
She turned the corner and found the British vampire pinned under several oil drums. Near him was a mangled lawn chair, along with a crushed back of potato chips and a puddle of what smelled like beer.   
  
"It's about bloody time. Get me out of here!" Spike cried.   
  
"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked.  
  
"Well, I...I was just, um, comin' back from, uh, the store! Yeah, with some beer and crisps, see! Yeah! And-" he looked at the crushed lawn chair, "um, stealing some lawn furniture, you know, to dress up the old crypt a bit. I heard some bangin' around in here, so I came in for a look."   
  
"OK," Buffy grunted as she rolled a pair of barrels off of Spike. "You came, you saw, you got squished. Now go home."   
  
Spike got up, dusted himself off, and straightened his coat. "Right," he said. "Well, look at the time." He looked at his wrist, even though he had no watch on. "Got to be gettin' back," Spike continued. "Mexican football on the Spanish channel tonight. Hate to miss it." He took off at a half-walk, half-jog for the entrance.  
  
Buffy turned to Giles. "OK, that was just weird," she said, as they started up the stairs.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya was more confused than he had ever been in his life.   
  
He had watched Taghryn's final confrontation with her prey from the end of the hall, and he couldn't understand the outcome. How could Taghryn have lost? She was one of the best Hunters of her generation, and yet her prey had killed her almost single-handedly. HUMAN prey. Admittedly, a super-normal human, but it still should have been no match for a skilled Hunter like Taghryn. Her defeat was not merely bad luck; the human had matched Taghryn in strength, skill, and wits. No prey should be able to do that.   
  
But Reghya set his confusion aside. The hunt was over. What was important now was to retrieve Ghrall and Taghryn's Huntmasks and to properly dispose of their bodies. Cremation was the only acceptable method, which meant either burning them, or...he glanced at the yuragh.   
  
Or whatever was necessary.   
  
-----  
  
"I wonder what the deal is with the masks?" Xander mused aloud as his picked up the alien's lost facial covering. "I mean, it's not to conceal their boyish good looks."   
  
Xander put the mask over his face. Giles was about to caution him when Xander said, "Cool! It's got infrared vision!" He looked up at Buffy. "Look, Buffy's all orange!"   
  
Buffy was kneeling on the floor, examining some of the alien's weapons. "Orange?" she said, distractedly. "Yuck. Brings out my zits." Then she added, "Of which I have none."  
  
"Maybe you'll cool down to a nice auburn," Willow joked.   
  
Willow noticed what looked like a small, sliding control on the side of the mask, which Xander was still holding over his face, looking around. When Willow moved the control, Xander said, "Whoa, everything looks different now."   
  
He handed the mask to Willow. "Hmm," she said, looking through it. "Looks like ultraviolet."   
  
She fiddled with the control again. Suddenly, it looked as if it were raining lightly inside the room, except that the rain went in all directions instead of just downward.   
  
"Hey," Willow said, "I think it's got a radiation detector. I can see the background count inside the room."   
  
Willow went into the next room and looked out the window. "Yup," she called. "It's a little stronger outside."   
  
"All right," said Giles. "We can examine everything later. Right now, I think several of us could use a visit to the Emergency Room."   
  
"Great," Xander said, rubbing his head where it had slammed into the wall. "I hear if you get nine concussions, they'll treat the tenth one free."   
  
Buffy was kneeling over the dead alien, examining its weapons. "Wow," she said. "This thing has more knives than Julia Child. And some other weapons I can't begin to figure out. Boy, if the Initiative were still around, would they love to..."   
  
Her voice trailed off as she sensed something odd. A slight motion in the floor, as if something huge were moving very carefully right up behind-  
  
Buffy sprang to her feet, but it was too late; something huge grabbed her from behind. It pulled Buffy's wrists behind her and threaded its left arm between her elbows and her back, pinning both of Buffy's arms against its body. The creature's other arm, almost completely invisible, went around her neck.   
  
Buffy slammed her head backwards, trying to hit her assailant in the face with the back of her skull. But the creature was so much taller, her head only hit its bony chest, which hurt her at least as much as it.   
  
Suddenly, the creature's invisibility ran off of its body like a liquid, revealing a huge, masked alien like the others. Buffy was taken by surprise; she had thought there were only two aliens.  
  
"GIVE TO ME," the creature boomed.   
  
But Buffy was only partly aware of the enormous humanoid's words. Her attention was held by a band around the creature's wrist, which was emitting little beeps a little less than once per second. Rolling her eyes downward, Buffy could see that the wristband also had a green LED display of some kind. Three symbols were visible. One symbol changed every time the device beeped; the next symbol changed only on every eighth beep.   
  
As Buffy watched, the third symbol changed.   
  
A countdown, she thought. This is so not good.   
  
"GIVE TO ME," the alien repeated.   
  
Then, a moment later, "OR DIE."  
  
-----  
  
Reghya did not like what he had been forced to do, but he had few other options. If the humans would not give Ghrall and Taghryn's bodies back to him, then the yuragh would destroy them all. Reghya would also die, but that was better than letting the humans commit who knew what sort of defilement of the bodies of his dead children.   
  
Two of the humans were pointing firearms at him, but Reghya was unconcerned. Humans were mutually protective; they would not risk harming their fellow just to kill him.   
  
Reghya's only problem now was the language barrier. The local human tongue was different in every way from the Hunters' language, and Reghya had only managed to learn a little of it in over a month of study. He didn't know the human words for "corpse" or "body" or "dead".   
  
The small female human still struggled uselessly in Reghya's grip, but the Hunter was too consumed by his thoughts to pay it much mind. He regretted that he hadn't learned the human language better, that he couldn't make them understand him. And he regretted that he would not be able to send the records of this hunt home. Reghya's children, Taghryn especially, had been great hunters, and it saddened Reghya that their last adventure would go unremembered by his people. The other Hunters would assume that Reghya, Ghrall, and Taghryn had died in an accident, or had been killed by ordinary humans. They would never know about the exceptional prey that had hunted Reghya and his children even more skillfully than they had hunted it.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy continued to struggle in the giant humanoid's grasp, but no amount of twisting and thrashing would dislodge its grip. She tried to kick at its shins with her heels, but she couldn't get enough windup space to do any damage. Picking up both feet did nothing; the huge being could hold her up easily.   
  
The others were stared at Buffy and her captor, unsure of what to do, when Willow walked back into the room. She was still wearing the alien mask.   
  
"Hey, guys, what-? Oh!" she said when she saw what the others were staring at.   
  
Xander, still pointing his gun at the creature, gestured with it towards the alien's wrist. "Does everyone else agree with me that that thing is a bomb?" he said.   
  
"Oh God," Willow said. "I see little lines coming out of it." She swallowed hard. "I think its nuclear."   
  
"There are h-houses all around here," Tara said with horror. "Hundreds of p-p-people."  
  
Giles stepped towards the alien, raising both hands to signify that he was unarmed.   
  
"Please," he said, slowly and loudly. "We don't understand what you want!"   
  
"GIVE TO ME OR DIE," it repeated. "SLAY-ERR GIVE GHRALL TAGHRYN TO ME!"   
  
"Give what?" Anya said, looking exasperated. "What's a crawl tag-grin?"   
  
Buffy looked down. She was still right in front of the dead alien's body. Stretching her legs as far as possible, Buffy reached her feet towards one of the dead humanoid's boots.   
  
Suddenly, Buffy clamped the soles of her feet around the handle of the dead alien's other boot knife. She swung both legs upwards and then back, driving the knife up to the hilt into her captor's calf.   
  
The creature cried out; its hold on Buffy weakened. She got her right arm free and elbowed the alien's ribs twice, breaking several of them. Then she turned and smashed the same elbow into the monster's jaw.   
  
The humanoid released Buffy completely. She front-kicked it in the stomach, then leaped up and smashed her foot into its masked face. The alien fell to the ground and lay there, barely moving.   
  
Buffy turned to the others. "Come on," she said, hurriedly waving them forward. "We'll drop the bomb down the Hellmouth in the library. I don't care how powerful it is, it can't-"  
  
"Buffy," Xander interrupted. He pointed at the wristband. "I don't think we have time."   
  
The first of the three symbols was completely gone.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya could barely think. Blackness swirled before his closed eyes; his head swam from the impact of the human's blows, which were as forceful as any Hunter's. The human had been as clever as one, too, in the way it had used its feet to wield Taghryn's knife.   
  
Strangely, Reghya's mind drifted back to a moment from his childhood. He remembered his parents' garden, where his father grew prickle-leaf and greenberry to season their meat. Most of the prickle-leaf grew in a great bunch in the center of the garden, but a few individual plants were scattered here and there, growing on their own. One had even sprung up outside the garden; somehow, it survived in a small wedge of dirt between the roots of a tree.   
  
Reghya opened his eyes. His mask was malfunctioning, the images blurred and discolored, but he could see that the human, Slayer, was standing over him.   
  
Now I understand, Reghya thought.   
  
You are the prickle-leaf.   
  
-----  
  
Xander and Willow ran forward and began frantically pushing buttons on the alien's wristband. The countdown continued.   
  
Upset beyond reason, Buffy grabbed the fallen humanoid by the shoulders and shook it.   
  
"Turn it off! Now!" she yelled, not knowing what else to do. Tears of rage and frustration welled in her eyes.   
  
"You don't have the right to do this! We're not just animals you can hunt for fun! We're human beings!"   
  
The second symbol on the wristband vanished. Eight seconds left.   
  
"TURN IT OFF!" Buffy screamed.   
  
The creature reached its other arm over, slowly, painfully, and pushed three buttons on the wristband. The countdown stopped.   
  
The creature turned its head to look up at Buffy.   
  
"SLAY-ERR," it said. It was working hard to speak; its jaw was probably broken.   
"SLAY-ERR. NOT. HUMAN."   
  
It took an agonized breath.   
  
"SLAY-ERR. IS. HUNT-ERR."  
  
Then the creature stopped moving.   
  
-----  
  
Reghya awoke in darkness.   
  
He could feel something crumbly, like dry shreds of paper, all over his back and legs. From somewhere above him, he could hear tiny whistling sounds, like the calls of the tree-flyers on his home world.   
  
Opening his eyes, Reghya saw thin blue shapes above him, waving in the slight breeze. Bits of orange sat on the thin forms, occasionally hopping from one to another, or flying out of sight altogether.  
  
What a strange place, he thought. Is this where the dead go?   
  
Gradually, Reghya became aware of pain in his jaw and ribs. It seemed unlikely to him that the dead felt pain. Then he remembered that his vision was blurry because his Huntmask was damaged. He reached up and pulled it off.   
  
Reghya found himself lying in the forest. The ground was covered with dry leaves that had fallen from the trees above. That explained the sensations on his back. Earth birds, small but loud, sang in the trees.   
  
He looked to his left and saw the bodies of Ghrall and Taghryn laying near him. Tracks on the ground indicated that a wheeled vehicle had brought them here, weaving amongst the trees. The forest floor, along with some of the trees, was blackened in spots, and Reghya realized that this was where his children had first faced the two humans.   
  
Reghya corrected himself. Not humans. One human, perhaps. And one Hunter with a human face.   
  
He rose to his feet. With great effort, he picked up Ghrall's body and began to carry it to the drop ship. It wasn't far; he would be back for Taghryn soon.   
  
It was important that he get them home. He had to cremate their bodies publicly, so that he could explain to everyone what had killed them. And tell the others never to visit Earth again.   
  
One did not hunt other Hunters.   
  
-----  
  
Buffy, Giles, and Xander headed back towards town in Joyce's SUV, which they had borrowed to take the aliens' bodies back into the woods. Giles had objected at first, questioning the wisdom of leaving a nuclear-armed creature to its own devices in the forest. But Buffy believed the alien would do no more harm.   
  
"If it wanted to blow us up, it would have," she said. "I think it just wants to take its friends' bodies and go home."   
  
"Yeah," Xander agreed. "I'm just glad not to have to change my mailing address to Ground Zero."   
  
Giles' brow furrowed. "I still don't understand how you convinced it, Buffy," he said.   
  
"Or what it meant when it called you a hunter," Xander added.   
  
"I don't know," Buffy said, her brow furrowed.  
  
"Perhaps..." Giles started, then trailed off.   
  
"What?" Buffy asked.   
  
"Perhaps it felt some sort of connection with you, saw you as a, a colleague, an equal. A fellow hunter."   
  
Buffy lifted her head, sudden anger in her eyes. "I am nothing like them," she said vehemently. "They hunt people for sport, for fun! What I do is totally different!"   
  
"Of course, of course," Giles agreed. "Not the same at all."  
  
"Yeah," Xander said. "Totally different. I mean, you slay to protect the world. It's not like you enjoy it."  
  
"Right," Buffy said. Her voice grew quieter. "Right."  
  
They drove the rest of the way in silence.   



End file.
